#desklabor

My life is small and cramped;
At least that's what the mouse tells me.

To make these drawings I attach a pen to my mouse and then go about my normal "work" activities - my day job and my art practice - using various computers and peripherals (mice).

The sketches function as indicators and maps of my actions as a laborer and maker. They're not *about* life in the digital economy but they're reflective *of* it: constrained, monotone, reliant on technology, and sadly frantic. Like the digital economy they're also not quite what I'd expected. I anticipated long flowing circular gestures but instead of free expressive forms I got something a bit desperate. I was surprised by the apparent disconnect between what I was "doing" on screen and the associated physical motions, the former seeming so much more expansive than the latter.

For the first set of drawings, made in 2017, I completed a specific and limited set of software and computing associated tasks: using the erase tool in Photoshop or checking and reading email in Outlook. In late 2018 I restarted the project, adjusting the parameters and recording all actions over a specific hour long period to capture "an hour of my work." I think of the sketches as a form of anthropological research and love being my own subject; a sort of reworking of some of Helen Molesworth's ideas in Work Ethic by which I function as both Supervisor/User and Producer (dictating and analysing my own marks) with Adobe at the interstices draining all my cash. You can see my motions but also sometimes (literal) points of reflection: blots of varying size where the pen rested while I thought.

images

top
left: ILLiad, RT, and email, 2017.
center: one hour at work, 2018.
right: photoshop, 2017.

middle
left: open studios photoshop, 2017.
center pc restart and download more software(slow wifi) - closeup, 2017.
right: one hour at work, 2019.

bottom:
pc restart and dropbox sync (slow wifi), 2017.